TILT – Therapeutic Innovations in Light of Technology
Cyber Supervision Anne Stokes
Recently, attempting to create some order in my life – or rather my loft room – I went through 27 years of journals, removing articles worth keeping, and binning the rest. I came across ‘Relationship Serenity’ by Michael Neill, looking at relationships between clients and coaches in faceto-face work. He quoted that wonderful prayer of Niebuhr, commonly called ‘The Serenity Prayer’. A friend had just given me a bookmark with it on, so I began to be curious about its application to Online Supervision.
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The starting point was acknowledging that I’m at my best as an online supervisor when we’ve co-created a good relationship. This isn’t as easy online as it is f2f, as perhaps more time is spent f2f paying attention to relationship building. In synchronous supervision, there can be pressure to ‘get on with it’, or asynchronously, a feeling that boundaries may be crossed if I make enquiries that appear more personal in an email response. Yet if I don’t do this, how do I really get to know my supervisees, support and hold them, or know when there may be ‘buttons’ touched? So I need to have the ‘wisdom to know the difference’ between what is purely ‘nosey-ness’ on my part and what is
genuine relationship building, enhancing online supervision and therefore benefit the client. I also then need to have the courage to change aspects of our relationship where necessary. Neill talks about the possible desire of a coach to control the ‘coachee’. This can also be true in online supervision. As supervisors, we can be so sure that we can see what the supervisee’s ‘problem’ is with this client, or have a useful bit of theory to inform the process, that we thrust this on to the supervisee! In other words we’re attempting to control the other. Now, I am not suggesting that we shouldn’t use our insights, hunches, and knowledge. If we don’t, we are being withholding, which can